1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a video decoding technique and, more particularly, to a video decoding apparatus and method based on a data and function splitting scheme capable of maximizing parallel processing operational characteristics and efficiency of a decoding operation.
2. Description of the Prior art
A video compression/restoration technique requisite for multimedia is implemented by new video compression standards such as H.264/AVC, VC-1, AVS, and the like, having a very high compression rate and allowing for reliable transmission, as well as MPEG currently used for HDTV broadcasting.
In particular, as these video compression standards are combined with next-generation services such as digital data broadcasting, next-generation mobile phones, IPTV, satellite DMB, and the like, their applications are anticipated.
The video compression technique has been developed for the purpose of minimizing bandwidth use by reducing bit size while maintaining restored screen image picture quality as high as that of the original.
Compared with existing video compression standards such as MPEG-2, the new video compression standards have an algorithm with remarkably increased complexity and request a large amount of calculation, which thus requires dedicated hardware or a device for real time compression/restoration.
Recent video compression standards involve the interdependence of data in a single screen image (i.e., intra-screen data) as well as interdependence of data between screen images (i.e., inter-screen data), making it difficult to implement the parallel processing of a video decoding system, and an optimum solution to this has yet to be proposed.
The prior art splitting scheme for parallel-processing includes a data splitting scheme in which data itself processed in resource is split and a function splitting scheme in which a function module is split in a pipeline manner and processed.
FIG. 1 illustrates a multiprocessor-based video decoding apparatus employing the data splitting scheme according to the prior art.
As shown in FIG. 1, in the data splitting scheme, an input stream is split into a plurality of data fragments 111 to 116 according to a certain level (e.g., frame, slide, a macroblock row, macroblock (16×16), block (4× pixel)), and each of the split data is parallel-processed by different processors 121 to 123.
The data splitting scheme illustrated in FIG. 1 can make data (streams) highly parallel, provided the split data have no interdependence therebetween, but is ineffective for a multimedia application which has intra-screen or inter-screen data dependency.
FIG. 2 illustrates a multiprocessor-based video decoding apparatus employing the function splitting scheme according to the prior art.
As shown in FIG. 2, in the function splitting scheme, a decoding function is split into a plurality of functions 211 to 216, and the split functions are parallel-processed by different processors 221 to 226.
However, the function splitting scheme illustrated in FIG. 2 is based on a pipeline processing structure, so if a processing time between processors is different, resource use efficiency is thereby degraded, which thus requires the additional performance of a process of uniformly splitting the function.